Devastation Road (20 page)

‘Oh, rules, snooze,’ she said. She took a look at Little Man crying in Irena’s arms. ‘Wowsers, you’ve got some lungs. Yours?’ she asked Irena. Her smile
widened and Irena nodded. ‘Sweet.’

Then her eyes scanned Janek up and down. ‘As for you . . . Let me guess.
Č
ech?
’

Owen had no idea how she had been able to tell. The boy grinned.

‘I knew it. Damn.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘This girl’s been here too long. You’re coming in then, Mister Airman?’ She took Owen’s arm and glanced at
the others, Irena jigging the baby and Janek shouldering his bag. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said to them, ‘I’ll send him out when we’re done.’

The smartly dressed American lady deposited him in a reception where there was a desk, a secretary and a row of hard-backed seats that gave it the rather uncomfortable air of a
well-to-do doctor’s surgery. At one side of the room was a set of high double doors. Walnut, Owen thought, or oak, with vines and flamboyantly feathered birds carved into the panels. The
woman went to introduce him to the receptionist but she was on the telephone and then they were both distracted by a booming voice coming down the stairs.

‘Well, my Lord, would you believe it—’

‘Oh my God!’ the woman squealed. ‘Charlie!’

‘Where in devil’s name have you been hiding?’

And that was rather the end of it. The pristinely dressed Charlie swept her out of the room, all excitable chatter, and the woman made a vague gesture to Owen to indicate that she was all but a
helpless damsel in the company of this man, telling him that the receptionist – Owen hadn’t caught her name – would help for sure, and really the colonel was a softy, all bark and
no bite. They disappeared, laughing, up the stairs, and Owen took one look at the receptionist, who was giving someone on the telephone an earful, and snuck instead into the toilets to quietly
gather himself.

The room was small and a little shabby, and beside the cubicle and a porcelain sink that needed a scrub there wasn’t much else to it. The window was open and outside he could hear a
commotion – Janek’s voice and Little Man’s cries and, further down the street, still the distant strains of swing. He leant over the sink and stared into the mirror, trying to
pull his thoughts together and compose his story. It was a stroke of luck that had brought them here, but now, faced with an opportunity, he didn’t quite know how to handle it.

Each day he seemed to look older and thinner. Once-plump parts of his face were now sinking in, his collarbones like railings, and the skin around his eyes had turned dark. He pressed at his
ribs. That bloody ache was still there.

As he filled his cupped hands with water from the trickling tap and held them for a moment to his face, he heard someone crash in behind him, breathless, before the door banged shut and a bolt
was hastily pulled across. He turned around.

‘Bloody hell. What are you doing?’

She leant back against the door, her hand firmly clutching the handle as she tried to catch her breath.

‘I had to see you,’ she said.

She wiped at her face as her eyes darted around the room.

‘And where’s the baby?’

‘With Janek.’ She went quickly to the window and peered through it, then turned back. ‘You do not understand,’ she said. ‘They were not going to let me
in.’

‘Well, I know that. What’s the matter?’

‘I have to tell you,’ she blurted. ‘Before you see this colonel.’

‘What do you mean?’

Her eyes widened. ‘You have to help me. You have to make them help me.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Of course. She meant the baby.

‘No, you don’t!’ She seemed to leap at him.

He raised his hands, trying to pacify her. He had never seen Irena like this, her eyes so wild, stepping anxiously about as if she wanted to pace but there wasn’t the room. She pressed her
lips together, trying to control herself, and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hand. She took a deep breath.

‘The man,’ she said, her eyes filling. ‘The man that raped me. He was American. An American soldier.’

Owen stared at her.

‘Are you sure?’

She nodded.

‘Jesus Christ.’ He tried to think. ‘But . . . My God, Irena, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I was scared.’

All this time he had known that she was keeping something from him. But did she honestly think that an American here in Leipzig might help them track this man down? She looked so small now in
that dirty white dress and the ragged pink cardigan.

‘Where did it happen?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. And then: ‘In Aachen. It was in Aachen. I tried to stop him. I promise. I didn’t want it. You have to tell them.
Please.’ She drew closer to him, her tears gathering wet around her chin, so that instinctively he backed away, unsure of how to handle her. ‘I need them to help me,’ she begged.
‘Not much, just some money or . . . I don’t know, maybe they can give me somewhere to live so I can look after it. I could look after it; I could do that if they helped me. Or, I
don’t know, fly us away from here – America, I don’t care, but they have to help me. They raped me. This man. In Aachen. This American. You have to tell them. Please. It was an
American soldier.’

Colonel Hall would not be seen. The smartly uniformed woman at the reception desk, her arms resting on a leather inlay and fingers rolling a blunt pencil in her hand, was quite
firm about that. She reeled off a list of reasons, each one digging her heels in deeper, but Owen was only half listening. He could feel the walls folding in on him. Every sharp tick of the
pendulum wall clock chipped a bit of him away.

He had left Irena in the gent’s toilet and she had still not reappeared. If she didn’t slip out soon she would be found and hauled over the coals – and him with her
probably.

‘I’ll wait,’ he said.

‘I’m afraid you won’t,’ said the receptionist. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

‘But I’m British RAF,’ he complained.

‘And your papers?’

‘I don’t have any,’ he said.

‘Proof of identification?’

‘I told you!’ He could hear his voice rising. ‘Isn’t my word good enough?’

‘Not these days, no,’ she said.

‘Well, it will bloody well have to be.’

She put the pencil down hard and eyed him over the rim of her glasses with an expression that said:
Well, without any papers, what am I to do?

Just then the double doors opened and two uniformed men came through. The reception filled with voices.

‘Miss Meier here’ll sort you out,’ the larger of the two said, motioning at the receptionist.

That must be the colonel, Owen thought. He had broad enough shoulders, an eagle badge sewn on each.

‘It’s a damn mess, though,’ he said. ‘You’d think these people would be begging for jobs, but no. No, I reckon they’re just about used to getting everything
done for them.’

‘Well, we’re gonna have to teach ’em somethin’ ’bout that, sir,’ said the other. He was young and puppyish, more gung-ho than was necessary.

The colonel smiled thinly, a hand at the man’s elbow that clearly signalled:
Off you go
.

‘Yes, well . . . I’ll be seeing you, Bill. And, don’t forget, I’ll be needing those cables . . .’

They shook hands again and said goodbye. As the colonel disappeared back into his office, Owen leapt towards the door.

‘Excuse me! Colonel Hall?’

The receptionist bolted from her seat. ‘Hey! Sir!’

But Owen had already pushed against the closing door and into the room.

‘Sir, I said no!’

The colonel had barely got midway across his office.

‘So sorry, sir,’ Owen and the receptionist both said. She was teetering in the doorway.

‘I do apologize,’ said Owen. ‘Flight sergeant. British RAF.’ He saluted.

‘I don’t care what the hell you are, barging in here like a couple of bloody musketeers.’

‘I did try to stop him, sir.’

‘I don’t rightly care,’ snapped the colonel.

‘I just need five minutes of your time, sir,’ said Owen.

‘I don’t have five minutes,’ said the colonel. ‘And who the hell are you anyway? You got an appointment?’

‘No, sir, he certainly does not,’ said the receptionist tartly.

‘No,’ admitted Owen, ‘and I wouldn’t ask, only . . .’ Only now he couldn’t think and the colonel was staring. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘You have
to see me. I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate.’

He could feel his insides melting. He was shaking, everything that was keeping him upright seeming to fall away.

The colonel stared at him, drawing in his pale lips. ‘Goddamn it, all right. Five minutes. And that’s your lot. Understand?’ He looked Owen up and down and moved back to his
chair. ‘You look like some godforsaken farm boy,’ he said, sitting back down heavily. ‘British RAF?’

‘Yes, sir. Sorry about making an entrance like that, sir.’

‘Yeah, well . . . And don’t think about sitting down,’ he said. He stared at Owen as he stirred a cup of tea on his desk.

Owen heard the door close. He glanced around the room, at the paintings dotted around the walls, mostly pastoral scenes he noted, and the spot above the colonel’s desk where a single
picture had been removed and there was a rectangle of panelling that was slightly darker than the rest.

‘Well?’ said the colonel, tapping the spoon against the rim with finality. ‘Go on then.’

The room felt unbearably hot, even with the sash window open. Owen drew himself up to his full height. With relief he could hear Irena’s voice in the street outside.

‘I’d like to report a missing person, sir,’ he said, trying at last to catch his breath.

It wasn’t what he had planned to say first but it came out of his mouth anyway.

The colonel put the spoon down. ‘Oh yeah?’ he said. ‘And who the hell might that be?’

The telling of the story was not as simple as it should have been. It had no beginning and even the middle was a tangle.

He had been in a camp, he eventually said, some days’ walk east from Leipzig.

‘But what happened before that or how I got there, sir, I don’t know.’

His memory, he told the colonel – bits of it were gone, broken away, and he was only now starting to reclaim it.

‘And then I woke up in a field,’ he said, ‘and I was in Czechoslovakia, and that’s where I met Janek, sir. And Irena, well, she came later. She’s the one with the
baby.’

‘The baby?’

‘Yes, sir.’ He wasn’t explaining himself at all well. He’d come back to the baby later. The problem was that it was all so muddled. ‘I wish I could remember what
had happened, but I can’t. I don’t even know where I’m going. I just need to get home.’

‘And where’s that?’ said the colonel.

‘Well, I worked in Kingston, sir. I know that. I was a draughtsman at Hawkers.’

‘The planes?’

‘That’s right, sir. Designing Hurricanes and whatnot, and then . . . then . . .’ Well, that’s when it started to blur.

‘But I thought you said you were a pilot,’ said the colonel.

‘Yes. I am, sir.’

‘But you don’t remember?’

‘No, sir. Not exactly. I get flashes of flying. I can see it in my head. I can see the cockpit, the instrument panel. I know all the systems. I could draw you any sort of gauge you like,
sir: engine oil pressure, oil temperature, coolant temperature, fuel tank, you name it. I know how to read them all.’

‘That doesn’t make you a pilot.’

‘I’m telling you, sir, I flew Avro Lancasters. Mark three. Great big birds,’ he said, wanting to shout it out. ‘With Max.’

‘Max?’

‘My brother.’

‘And he’s there in your head as well, is he?’

Owen lost his temper. ‘Look, I’m telling you, I flew. We flew together – Max and I – and I lost him. I bloody lost him.’

He took a gasp of breath. The man across the desk leant back in his chair, the wooden legs slowly creaking. Owen didn’t even know what he was doing there any more.

‘Okay, so backtrack,’ said the colonel. ‘Let’s go back to this camp of yours.’ He jotted something down on a pad beside his elbow. ‘Now let me see, was that
before you flew or after?’

‘After.’

‘Only I’m getting confused.’

‘It was after, sir. I flew – we flew – and then I was in the camp. And then I woke up and I was in this field. And I don’t know what happened.’

‘Right. And where exactly was this field?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And the camp?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. Look, a place called . . .’ He rubbed his head and tried to think. There
had
been names but now he couldn’t think of them.
Places and people. ‘I’ve been there,’ he said. ‘I went. I went with Janek. We saw it.’

‘But it had a name? This camp?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It would have had a name, but no, I don’t know.’ He was getting confused, his head clogged with so much that he couldn’t think straight.
‘Look, perhaps I wrote it down,’ he said, suddenly remembering. ‘I’ve been writing everything down that comes to me, trying to piece it together. And I’ve got it here.
See? I’ve been writing it down. I’ll show you.’

He would lay it out on the desk for the colonel and it would all come back to him: all the names and numbers and circles and arrows, the blueprint for remembering.

He put his hand in his pocket for it and then the other pocket, but there was only a worn-down pencil, the broken watch and bits of grit and thread. Even the square of material was gone. He
checked the jacket pocket and then the trouser pockets again, and the jacket for a second time.

‘It’s a square piece of paper,’ he said, still searching. ‘It’s folded, and I have it. It’s here somewhere. Everything’s written on it. I promise.
I’ve got it. I’ve got it. It’s just . . .’ He checked the trouser pockets again, digging around in them. He could feel the panic filling him. ‘I had it just
here,’ he said, ‘just now. It was here, I’m telling you.’

He checked the breast of the jacket where something else had once been, then fumbled around within the shirt, thinking he might have slipped it inside for some reason, or perhaps it had fallen
out where the button was missing; not the button he had but a smaller one, a different one. He looked on the floor for it. No, it was the letter he needed. No, not the letters. He’d thrown
the letters away. It was a piece of paper. A fucking piece of paper with everything he knew on it and now—